Longmont council to vote on new oil, gas regulations

First of two votes comes a month before moratorium expires

By Scott RochatLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
05/06/2012 10:50:17 PM MDT

Updated:
05/06/2012 11:02:56 PM MDT

LONGMONT --On Tuesday, the Longmont City Council will vote on whether to adopt its new oil and gas regulations, the city's first update since 2000. The second and final vote is set for May 22. If both pass, the rules take effect June 5, less than two weeks before a moratorium on oil and gas drilling expires.

Pass or fail, someone's bound to be upset. Council members have received more than 200 pages of emails and letters on the matter.. Many come from state and industry representatives asking that the rules be dropped. Many come from residents asking for tougher rules and a longer moratorium.

If you go

What: Longmont City Council to vote on first reading of oil and gas regulations

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 8

Where: Council chambers, 350 Kimbark St.

For more information: The current draft of the regulations can be found here.

Links to the complete background material may be found here, under section 9A.

Rarest of all are the emails like Brad Churchill's, a resident who told the council he's fine with the new rules, and that the risks to air and water quality claimed by opponents don't seem to be supported by the data.

"Living for 30 years within a half-mile of 40 fractured wells on two pads adds a risk of dying of cancer, by my calculations, that is about the same as the risk of dying in an automobile accident each time you drive 140 miles on Colorado roads," Churchill said. "Given that the risks are small and manageable, I think the proposed regulations are acceptable and will safeguard the public."

Rules and regs

Now in their third draft, the rules set up two standards for drilling and operating wells: a "minimum" set of rules that largely reflect state guidelines and a tougher "recommended" set that companies can promise to follow if they want a permit more quickly. While the approach is a common one in zoning policy, Longmont may be the first Colorado city to apply it to oil and gas.

Both sets of rules ban surface drilling in residential zones -- unless there is no other way for operators to reach the minerals they own -- and restrict waste disposal facilities to heavy industrial zones. The recommended rules ask that wells stay at least 750 feet away from occupied buildings, as well as playgrounds and other areas with outdoor activities.

A recent revision also says that occupied buildings can't be planned with 150 feet of an abandoned well site, and that residential developments can't include any abandoned wells.

That hasn't been the only tinkering since the standards were last reviewed April 17. A rule requiring the city to get 24 hours notice of a spill has been pulled, saying instead the operator must give whatever notice is required by state and federal law. (A state task force recently recommended that the state adopt a "real time" notification system.)

Likewise, the city scratched a requirement that berms around tanks of used water and stored waste be inspected every six months. Inspection schedules are set by the state, though Longmont hopes to reach an agreement to give the city some local inspection authority.

That agreement could be important since the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state regulating body, has only 17 inspectors to cover the entire state.

Thoughts and Voices

Since the council first approved its oil and gas moratorium in December, response has been animated.

Many residents have called for either drilling or hydraulic fracturing -- also known as "fracking"-- to be banned from Longmont altogether, a position the state has already declared off-limits. Others want a longer moratorium and some additional rules, such as a ban on drilling in parks and public zones or a requirement that wells be at least 1,000 feet from a home.

"It blows my mind that Longmont would even consider letting these people anywhere near our town," resident Travis Gahn wrote to the council. "They don't care about us. They just want to make money. The amount of oil and gas that could be acquired out of Longmont is completely insignificant and has no effect on the oil supply or gas prices. It just isn't worth the risk."

Recent letters from the Colorado Attorney General's office and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, meanwhile, have asked to kill the rules. COGA, an industry group, called the regulations "unnecessary and overreaching."

A huge stack of studies has also piled up in the city's information packet, including the well-known Pavillion, Wyo., study by the Environmental Protection Agency. That study reached a preliminary conclusion that fracking had likely contaminated ground water in the area.

Several other reports in the packet focused on the possibilities of air pollution.

One study of Weld County's wells, based on data from the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory, suggested the state had underestimated the methane emission of wells by half; another, from the Colorado School of Public Health, estimated that health risks were greater for those who lived within half a mile of an oil or gas well.

One February 2012 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute noted that regulations in many states were drawn before the current increase in shale gas development and could stand to be updated to ensure adequate testing, protection of sensitive areas, and cleanup. However, it concluded that the "migration" of fracking fluids into aquifers hadn't been adequately proven; the risk of contamination, the study said, was actually higher from surface spills.

"There is at present little or no evidence of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing of shales at normal depths," the researches wrote. The Pavillion site, they said, used fracturing at a shallower-than normal depth.

New coordinator pushes Buffs to work, play at level he expectsJim Leavitt has discovered this much about his new defense at Colorado: He has some talent with which to work, but his players need to put it in another gear. Full Story

New coordinator pushes Buffs to work, play at level he expectsJim Leavitt has discovered this much about his new defense at Colorado: He has some talent with which to work, but his players need to put it in another gear. Full Story